Behavior Management

I'm back for week 3 of the Digging into Next Year Linky! This weeks topic is all about behavior management. Everyone does it differently. My first year teaching, I did the whole red, yellow, green clip chart system. I actually did that my first two years. My third year teaching I used 7 level clip chart where each student starts out on ready to learn each day and can move up for down. I have this zebra clip chart freebie in my TPT store. I loved this system but I'll be the first to admit that I was really bad with keeping up with it.

Then I discovered Class Dojo! It is what I used last year and fell absolutely in love with it! So I'm bringing you a little "throwback post" reviewing the great website.
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Raise your hands if you use Class DoJo for classroom management? If you didn't, let me tell you, you are missing out! I discovered this amazing tool last year and decided to implement it into my management system this year. Before I used the clip chart and I was terrible at keeping up with it. I wanted something simple yet effective. DoJo was the answer!

Class DoJo is a FREE webiste that provides immediate feedback on positive and negative behaviors. It is also a FREE app that you can download to your smart phone or tablet. Here is how it works...

Simply go to www.classdojo.com and create a teacher account.

Once your account is created, your home screen will look like this.

Then you add your students into your "class." If you have more than one class, you can create more than one and they will show up like like shown above. Once your students are in the system, they are assigned an avatar. These are a BIG DEAL folks! I'll get to that in second.

This is obviously the sample class but gives you the idea of what it looks like. You can reward students for various positive behaviors that you can customize. Some things I look for are working hard, following directions, using kind words, helping others, etc. You can also punish students by taking a way points. You can also customize these punishments to fit your needs. For example, I use no homework, not following directions, out of seat, said a bad word, etc. When a point is rewarded it appears in the green circle by their name.

I love the DoJo app. I keep my phone with me all day and can easily add or take away points. Its perfect for hallway behavior or going to the library or computer lab.

My absolute favorite feature of this site is that parents can get connected and monitor their child's behavior all day. They sign up with their e-mail and every Friday it automatically sends them a weekly report of their child's behavior. Here is what it looks like. This is actually my class report so the percent you see is the average for the week so far. When the parent report is sent, it looks just like this expect it shows only their child's average. You can type comments about their behavior as well.

You can send reports every day but you have to send them. It does not send them automatically. I only send them daily if they loose a point. I do have a few parents who are not linked by e-mail. I simply print their child's weekly report on Friday and send it home in their folder. Want to know the best part...there is no papers to keep up with! No folders to sign! It seriously saves me so much time. I've asked several of my parents what they think about it and they love it too for that reason. They don't have to worry about signing their child's folder every day or each week. I've gotten lots of compliments on it.

Now you might be wondering how I go about rewarding students for their behavior. I simply offer a different "prize" for a certain amount points. My rewards are simple and they cost me little to nothing. The biggest reward for them, that they love the most is getting to change their avatar. Seriously ya'll, you have no idea what this means to my kids! I created a student account for each of them. On the sheet posted below it says they can change their avatar when they earn 10 points. I also let them change it for every 10 points they earn. Here are some of the DoJo characters!

Here is what my reward system looks like. You can click on the picture to download it or here.The file is editable so you can edit it to fit your needs. A color and black and white version is offered. I will say that if you do not have the font KG LegoHouse installed on your computer it will appear differently and you will need to change it to a font that works with your computer.

You can read about my classroom reward coupons here and get them on TPT here.

I loved this tool last year and got great parent feedback. They really liked it because they didn't have to worry about getting a folder signed and getting it returned to school. I loved not having to mess with a behavior folder. They knew immediately if something happened that day. You know, we do forget to contact parents sometimes. They knew if they got in trouble for talking or not following directions. But more of all, they loved seeing the positive that their child was doing. The knew if their child was on task or using good manners.

Do you use DoJo in your classroom? I'd love to hear how its working for you!